Left-handed Ball Glove

     More Letters From Paradise
      Left-handed Ball Glove

On the wall in one bedroom hangs a shadow box, containing an old baseball glove under glass. It has the name "Eddie Waitkus," stamped on it. It is my sixth-grade ball glove.Teena brought it to Hawaii,without my knowing it. I am very glad she did.

A couple of days ago on a sudden impulse, I decided to do some research, and find out who this ballplayer was. I was greatly surprised to learn that he was the player who was the subject of Bernard Malamud's book, "The Natural," published in 1952. A movie by the same name with Robert Redford and Glenn Close came out in 1989.

Eddie Waitkus played first base for the Cubs and the Phillies in the National League. And with the Orioles in the American League. He had an 11 year career. He threw both left and batted left too. He wrote poetry and spoke four languages. As a rookie he was called "the natural." He saw bitter combat against the Japanese in the Philippines.

When he returned to the Cubs he was hitting .300, and being stalked by an obsessed 19 year old girl named Ruth Ann Steomhagen. When he was traded to the Phillies, she could only see him eleven times a season. So she planned to kill him in 1949. She lured him to a room in the Edgewater Beach Hotel in Chicago, and shot him in the chest with a.22 caliber rifle. When she was discovered, she was holding his head in her lap.

Eddie had four operations to try and remove the bullet which was near his heart. He did recover, and she spent three years in a mental institution. She dropped out of sight and died at age 83 in Chicago.

In his later years he had a failed marriage, and began drinking, troubled by his history in combat and being shot. After he left the majors, he taught at Ted Williams Baseball Camp. He died of cancer in 1972, at age 53.

I remember well how I came to have my glove. We used to play ball in a vacant lot and I had to borrow some kid's glove. I had difficulty fielding the ball, pulling off the glove, switching the ball to my left hand, and throwing the ball. I really needed a left-handed glove. My mother took pity on me and bought me the glove in the shadow box.

        Aloha
        Grant